Sticky Keys
by sapphireswimming
Summary: Sam's got a bit of a problem, so she turns to Tucker, but he's having way too much fun with it to actually fix anything. Some epic Sam and Tucker friendship, with oblivious and seemingly unrequited DxS getting teased on the side. So, you know, just the usual. For DannyPhantomSG-1.


**Story idea conceived over skype and gifted to me by DannyPhantomSG-1 because it wasn't angsty enough for her, haha. But hopefully it's able to make you laugh despite craziness over on your end, Liv. ^^**

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**Sticky Keys**

September 1, 2013

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Sam sighed and finally turned away from her computer in frustration as she reached for her cell phone. She'd kept putting this off hoping that the problem would sort itself out over time but it had become clear that it wasn't going to fix itself on its own.

Time to call in her reinforcements.

She picked the second number on her speed dial and waited for a couple rings before her friend picked up.

"Hey, Sam, what's up?" came an interested, if slightly distracted, voice from the other end.

"Hey, Tuck," she greeted automatically before she continued, "Got a bit of a problem over here."

"Oh really?" His voice went up in surprise and she could hear him sitting up to attention. "And," he dragged out, "would that be an 'I'm-lovesick-for-Danny-and-can't-tell-him' kind of problem or more of a 'Tucker-says-Danny's-in-love-with-me-but-I-don't-b elieve-him'?"

She could hear him smirking and suddenly wished he was sitting right here so that she could punch it off of his face. But she couldn't, so she settled for the next best thing and growled, "Shut up, Tucker."

Of course, the tactic didn't work so well without the immediate threat of physical force to back it up because instead of making Tucker give up the subject entirely, he ran with it and crowed, "Ah, so both at once!

"Excellent. Well, as your relationship counselor, I would advise that you believe what I say when I tell you that Danny is head over heels in love with you but is just way too clueless about the whole thing to tell you." He beamed and she would have bet that his smile was threatening to split his face in two.

"Tucker?" she seethed through clenched teeth.

"Yeah, Sam?" he asked, the grin evident in his voice.

"Shut up."

"Ahahahaha," he laughed over the line, not at all taking this seriously. And this hadn't even been what she had wanted to talk about. Not that she ever wanted to talk about this sort of thing, because _really!_ but she hadn't called to get psyched out by her friend when she just needed him to…

"Tucker!" she barked into the mouthpiece and was happily rewarded by blessed silence a moment later.

"Yes?" He asked seriously, almost hesitantly, as if aware that he might have overstepped his bounds.

"I said shut up. This isn't what I called about. And if you talk about me and Danny as a couple together again, I'm going to hang up right now and I'll uninvite you from the—"

But no sooner had she started her threat than Tucker jumped in, "No, no, no! Don't do that, it's okay, I'm sorry, I know I was probably going a bit too far there… even though it is true," he added quickly and under his breath, "but I'm sorry, okay? I won't talk about you two lovebirds any more."

He finally paused to take a breath and wait for a response.

Despite what he had said earlier, Sam didn't find it in herself to hold him in suspense for very long and she'd never seriously considered enforcing her threat to keep him from her private midnight showing of the latest film from the Dead Teacher franchise anyway. "That's okay, Tucker, I just…" she sighed and rubbed her forehead. "This isn't what I need right now, okay? It's been a long day and now this stupid thing's giving me problems…"

"What's giving you problems?" Tucker asked, concerned.

"Ugh," Sam sighed again as she turned back to her computer. "My keyboard. For my computer. One of the keys is sticking."

There was a long pause. "And… why don't you just buy a new one?" Tucker asked, genuinely confused. He'd seen her speed-dial a company and get their latest software update in like ten minutes… after business hours were over… and months before the program was supposed to be released for the general market. She could already have had a professional fix whatever on earth was wrong with her keyboard. Or just buy a couple more brand new.

"I could," she admitted. "But I just got this one. And it's just the one key. I don't want to put another set of electronic gadgets in a landfill somewhere. Do you know how long it takes for that stuff to degrade?"

"No, I have absolutely no clue," Tucker said. "I also kinda don't care. But that's beside the point. So why did you call _me_?"

"Well, I figured that you would know how to fix it," she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "And if you didn't, maybe you would want first dibs on it. You still want to set up a couple monitors in your room, right?" she asked after a pause. "Maybe another keyboard would be handy if you don't mind a sticky key."

"Yeah!" Tucker said, pleased that she had remembered his year-long goal to get his room turned into a computer lab. Hand held gadgets were great and all, but the real magic happened on three monitors set up side by side. He never got tired of flicking his mouse over an inch or two so that it slid back and forth from screen to screen. "Yeah, I am. So yeah, if you don't mind parting with it…" he trailed off.

"Well, if you can't do anything with it, it's all yours."

"Awesome," Tucker said, mentally fist-pumping. "You realize this means that I'm going to try everything in my power to sabotage this fixing session, right?" he laughed.

"Tucker…" Sam drawled.

"Just kidding, just kidding!" he protested, only half meaning it.

"So, what bright ideas do you have for me?" she asked, staring down her keyboard with narrowed violet eyes.

He thought for a moment. "Turn it upside down and shake it, just to make sure there aren't any crumbs in there or anything."

Sam rolled her eyes. "It's not like I eat next to my computer, Tucker, there aren't any crumbs in there."

"If you say so," he said, skepticism bleeding through the line loud and clear. "But just humor me, okay?"

Placing her phone on the desktop, Sam neatly flipped over her keyboard and shook it a little, gratified when her hypothesis that nothing would fall from between the cracks was confirmed. She put it back in place and picked up the cell phone again.

"Okay, I did it, but nothing came out."

"Try the key now," Tucker instructed.

Sam pressed the offending key, but it acted the same as it had been for the past several days, sticking until it had printed itself at least five times on the page even though she only wanted it there once.

"Nope. No good," she said.

Tucker hummed. "Did you ever spill anything in your keyboard? Any liquids? Coffee or juice or something equally nasty and sticky?"

Sam's eyebrows both went up in disgust. "Um, no," she said shortly. "I don't have any food or drink by my computer. I'm careful about stuff like this, Tuck. And even if I had spilled something in there, wouldn't you think that the whole thing would be out of commission instead of just one key getting stuck?"

"Yeah, you are right about that," Tucker conceded. "So if nothing's in there, it might just be faulty wiring. That happens sometimes. I could try to come over and look at it, but you're honestly better off just getting a new one if it's that bad," he advised. "Or you might have worn down the connection if you were always pressing on it. But that would be weird since you said you just got it…" he trailed off, thinking, before asking, "What key is it? 'Enter'? Or the space bar?"

"No, it's the 'n' key."

"Huh," Tucker said thoughtfully, before suddenly choking off on another noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh, although she couldn't figure out for the life of her what was funny about that key or what was happening.

"What?" she demanded.

"Oh, nothing," Tucker tried to say, but his denial was completely negated by the snickers he was vainly trying to contain.

"No, Tucker, it's not nothing. Now tell me what you think is so funny!"

"If you say so," he chuckled.

"I do say so," she huffed, wishing again that she was sitting next to him so that he could see her crossed arms and arched eyebrows. They would make him talk.

"Well," Tucker laughed. "I think I know why that key is the one that's on the fritz…"

Sam waited for a further explanation but when it didn't sound like it was coming, she prodded him for one, "And why is that?"

When he started full out laughing a moment later, though, Sam began to wonder if she didn't want to hear what was running through his head.

"It's because… because…" he wheezed out between fits of laughter, "because there are two 'n's in Danny and since that's obviously… the letter you're typing out most… between all of your… diary entries… and love letters… and bad poetry… that it wears out more than twice as fast as anything else… bahahahhaahahaha!"

Sam was so frozen in shock that she wasn't able to formulate a response before Tucker completely dissolved into roaring laughter. She just sat blinking at her computer monitor, wondering if it was worth the brain power to break out of the stunned haze and finally decided that it wasn't. Flipping down the top half of her phone, Sam disconnected the call in the middle of one of his louder guffaws and decided that in a couple minutes, she would place the order for a new keyboard.

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**These guys' friendship is awesome. Unfortunately, there aren't many fics about it that aren't actually centered around Danny, which is understandable, I suppose, given that it _is_ a show about him, and the three of them basically function as a single unit, but it's still kinda sad.**


End file.
